Then There Were Three, Part 1
by LikeCrimsonBloodshed
Summary: Introducing Danny Dixon, The Second Middleman
1. Chapter 1 The Incident

"Yes, ma'am, believe me, I do understand the severity of the case. Yes. No. No, ma'am."

Daniel Dixon was a 22-year-old man who, in every sense of the word, was unassuming. Just a year out of graduating college and working as an overnight news writer for NewsChannel 9, he was caught in transition in his life. He had just left one part of his life and was still in search of that next landing.

And at the moment he was dealing with one of the perks he loved about his job the most, answering phone calls from the general public at 4 A.M. This one call was coming from quite the overzealous woman who would not stop insisting that "the police had taken her baby away".

"Well, ma'am, I don't know how else to tell you this, but when your baby shoots at the police, turns out that's a huge no-no. They can incarcerate him for that."

Five painstaking minutes of attempted supplication later, the woman had finally left the phone line, and once again he was left with his thoughts….and his coffee. The caffeine was his lifeblood every night he worked. He had to stay awake during hours in which nearly every other being on the planet was sound asleep. Coffee was his savior, and one of the greatest graduation gifts he received was a magical ten-cup thermos that somehow kept the coffee hot even after six hours of storage.

He sighed, shook his head and ran a hand across his face. He took a look around the near-silent newsroom, the one that would be dead quiet were it not for the dozen police scanners stacked to his right, chiming in the activity of police units in all of the nearest counties. There was never a quiet moment with these little black boxes around. Danny heard nearly every bad thing that happened in one night's time. He memorized all the police codes for murder, intoxicated driver, accident with injury and fire as part of his job. The next part of his job was executing his own news judgment to figure out whether or not to wake up the on-call photographer and send him out to capture footage of whatever went down.

Tonight had been pretty quiet, almost too quiet. There hadn't been a single case for him to make a call on all night. Death was the major prerequisite for all send-outs, and so far the night had been quiet as a tomb out there.

Then a call came out over one of the scanners for an unknown, and at the same time the phone rang.

Unknown case? He hadn't heard that being spoken before. He was interested to hear any further details coming up but answering the phone was also part of his job. He reached over and picked the black plastic receiver up.

"NewsChannel 9."

"Dude! You guys gotta get a camera out here and shoot this! I've never seen anything like it!"

"Calm down, sir. Tell me what you see right now."

"It just flew right past me! It was like a car, but with, like, HUGE rockets on the back of it!"

_Oh great. Another drunk._

"Really, sir? What kind of wings did it have?"

"Dude I'm being serious! It crashed on top of the overpass above me! It's on fire and everything! And I think a dude got flung out of it, he's not moving!"

"We'll send someone right out, sir. Thank you for your call."

"Just get someone out here quick!"

Danny hung up. _Freak._

The last thing he needed was more drunks and druggies placing phony calls into the station when something legitimate could come up and let him do his job. But, like every other occupation, every part of life had its nuts.

Then the phone rang again. Danny cocked an eyebrow and then picked it up again. Now what could it be?

"NewsChannel 9."

"Danny? It's Micah."

Micah was another photographer at the station. He wasn't on-call tonight, so Danny had no idea what this was about.

"What's up, Micah? What are you doing up so late?"

"Never mind that. Look, I was driving back and there's a huge vehicle fire atop one of the overpasses. You know who's on-call tonight? Send them out. We gotta get this before 8 and 4 do."

Becoming more and more perplexed by the minute, Danny copied down the address Micah gave him and woke up James the on-call. Was this fire the same thing that the first guy had called about? Were they connected?

"C'mon, Danny," he told himself. "Cars don't have rockets. You need another cup."

He poured another and settled back into the plush spinny chair he sat in all through the night every night he worked. If there was anything worth finding, James would.

Half an hour later, that call came.

"Um, Danny, why exactly did you wake me up and send me out here for nothing?"

"What do you mean? There was a fire! Micah called it in and told me himself.

"Well Micah was on something. There's nothing out here. Not even a burn mark. No debris, not nothing."

"That's impossible."

This was unheard of. Police clean-up of car accidents usually took 45 minutes at the least. He had made the call not five minutes after Micah reported it. No one could clean up the kind of fire he described in less than an hour.

But there was nothing? How could anyone get to that scene fast enough and leave no trace by the time James got there?

"Um…alright. Thanks, James. Sorry. Get back home."

He hung up the phone slowly, still almost in a daze.

.


	2. Chapter 2 The Attack

He had to recover quickly. The wee hours of the morning were coming to an end, which meant it was almost time for the 5 AM newscast. NewsChannel 9 was the leader for such newscasts, and any reason why someone would get up and watch the news at such a God-forsaken hour escaped Danny.

But the 5 AM was also Amy Mason's first newscast of the day. Amy was quickly becoming their station's most popular anchor among the viewers. Even though she had just joined the news team barely a year ago, she rose this far up the ranks in no time at all. Now many of the posters, signs, merchandise, and commercials for the news channel bore her likeness. She was like their trademark.

With a look like hers, Danny understood why it was so easy to make her so. Tall, thin, fiery red hair and a beauty that made him stare on more than one occasion. While her quick rise baffled him, this was still very much a business based on how you looked, and she had the look of a star.

But, then there was him, the guy who stayed up all night listening to police scanners and answering phones and writing scripts for the morning show. He was just rounding out his duties for that morning, his arms laden with piles of scripts to place on the news desk while the cameras were coming on.

He laid Amy's pile in front of her, and she gave him that same look-up-and-smile-warmly routine that he had seen morning after morning after morning. Looked like business as usual.

Danny crossed over to where the teleprompter was sitting and fired up the machine, loading the script that Amy and her co-anchor would be reading from that morning. He then donned his headset and set up the channel with the control room.

"Morning, guys. Let's give these early birds their news."

But all he got was static on the other end. He pushed the connecting switch again, and again. Still the same. He tried twisting the volume up and then mashing hard on the open connection switch.

He then recoiled in pain as a horrible, shrill ringing exploded in the headset. He ripped it off and dropped it on the table, his ears still reeling from the shock. He also heard Amy squeal from the desk, and he realized the sound must have gone through the channel connecting her earpiece as well.

Danny walked over to apologize, and then froze in his tracks. Amy looked positively, and deadly, furious. Not only that, but her eyes had turned yellow, and she seemed to be growling at him.

Yes, those were actual growls. Danny couldn't believe what he was seeing, and then her arms started to grow and bulge out until two large red tentacles exploded out of her sides, and her death glare centered fully on him.

He blinked hard and opened his eyes. Nope, the nightmare was still in front of him, and looking right at him. So he did what any self-preserving human being would do.

Danny Dixon turned tail and ran back to the teleprompter machine.

Behind him he heard a whipping noise and then he was falling forward, his hands grabbing the edge of the teleprompter desk. He looked behind him to see his leg completely wrapped up. Turning forward he grabbed the closest thing he could use as a weapon before he was pulled back.

He was sliding fast across the cold, hard floor. This was the last thing he ever thought he would be doing at this job.

What a morning.

She pulled him toward her and lifted him into the air, dangling him upside down. He did the only thing that came to his mind. He quickly unscrewed the lid of his thermos and thrust the hot coffee onto her face.

She screamed once again in pain and dropped him to the floor, where he quickly got up and tried to get away once again. But, again, he lasted almost ten seconds before that same whipping sound came up behind him, tripping him and making him fall forward.

Danny scrambled onto his back and saw something even more horrifying. Now Amy was clutching two of the studio cameras, one in each tentacle, and she was still bearing down on him. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those heavy pieces of metal would be enough to crush the life right out of him.

He shut his eyes tight. He didn't want to see any of his innards being smashed out of him when the moment came.

Bur it never did. What did come was the sound of two guns cocking behind him. He looked and saw two people standing in the main studio doors, holding what looked like two guns straight out of Star Trek leveled at Monster Amy. One was a tall, trim man with his hair perfectly settled into place, like the look of someone in the military. The other was a smaller girl who looked petite in build but as determined as some of the strongest people Danny had ever known.

They both looked at each other at the same time and then fired. Danny ducked as two sizzling hot blasts flew just past him. He felt the heat searing the air as they passed.

Danny looked up in time to see the blasts make contact with both tentacles, severing them off at the arm. Monster Amy fell and didn't get back up. There was just the smell of smoke and burnt flesh, and two large red tentacles now lying on the floor oozing some sort of purple juice.

The intensity of the moment got to Danny Dixon.

"HOLY [BLEEP] ON A [BLEEP] SANDWICH!"


	3. Chapter 3 An Unlikely Interrogation

Cleanup was almost done. The proper authorities had come around and done their thing, and for some reason, when he walked into the studio just ten minutes later, the tentacles and Monster Amy and the ooze was all gone, completely wiped away.

So he just stood there, wrapped in his blanket and drinking another cup of coffee, his thoughts pulsating and running together, trying to make sense out of a situation that had none.

"Mr. Dixon? May we have a word?"

Danny turned around to see the same two people who took down Monster Amy. The tall man was staring straight at him, and the girl was staring at his coffee.

Before he could thank them, they both pulled out badges that folded out and revealed their IDs. The man spoke first.

"My name is Special Agent Mark Donahue, and this is my partner…"

"Agent Maddie Nelson," she said.

"We're with the F.B.I. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions about what you witnessed this morning?"

Danny's eyes widened as he stared at the both of them.

"You're with the F.B.I.? Wow, you guys sure get here fast."

The taller man smiled down at him, but was clearly all-business at this point.

"You flatter us, Mr. Dixon, now about those questions…"

"Where'd you get that?"

Maddie Nelson was pointing at his coffee cup. Danny looked over at the man, who was chewing his lip slightly and turning toward her. Danny answered.

"Erm….in the….break…room?"

"I vote we move the questioning to the break room, boss."

He was fixing her with a derisive look, and Danny saw her hold up her hands in surrender.

"Or we could be all work. Your call."

The man smiled satisfyingly and turned back to Danny.

"Now, Daniel. May I call you Danny? Just easier."

"Yeah, sure, everyone else does."

The man pulled out a notepad and began to grill him.

"Now, tell us exactly what you saw this morning."

Danny looked at the man, then the girl, then back at him, then back at her. Wasn't it obvious?

"Um….I saw one of our main anchors grow two gigantic tentacles for arms and try to crush me to death with our cameras."

"You thought you saw this."

"Erm…no, I definitely saw it. Didn't you two? You were the ones who shot it."

The two of them looked at each other, then back at him. This time she led off.

"When did what you think you saw happen?

"Um…I still saw it. It still happened, and it was right after this shrill ringing noise went off in my headphones and in her earpiece. Must have driven her nuts…and then mutated her, I guess."

Danny saw the two of them look at each other again, this time with a look of recognition on both of their faces. The man closed the notepad and stuffed it inside his dark gray smoking jacket.

"Mr. Dixon, I do believe you need some rest. It must have been a long evening for you if you're talking about seeing these sorts of things."

Now Danny shot his arms out at his sides in frustration.

"What are you talking about? I know what I saw!"

This time the girl chimed in.

"Well, what's easier to believe? The fact that you just saw a mutated news babe try to make you her mashed potatoes, or that it was just the product of your fatigue after an overnight shift?"

Danny's mouth hung agape. What the hell was he hearing?

"Um, no. I've been working this shift for months now, and I know what I saw was real, OK? Maybe right now we should be talking about how the hell that happened as opposed to what I did or didn't see….which I did."

He looked expectantly at the both of them. All they did was look at each other, again, and then turn back to him. The man smiled politely.

"Excellent work, Mr. Dixon. You've done quite well."

What? What the hell did that mean?

"Excuse me?"

"You'll have to excuse our misleading inquisition. It's standard procedure brain damage assessment. You seem still perfectly lucid, even if your recollections seem odd. We suggest just a good night's rest."

Danny was flabbergasted. He could only splutter out a few words in confusion.

"But…I…you….what?"

"Work on that rest there, Mr. Dixon. We'll be in touch."

And with that, the two of them were walking around him and out the main studio doors. Danny could only turn and watch them leave, still at his wit's end completely.


	4. Chapter 4 What Do We Do Now?

"Color me confused, Dubbie. So far this case has me flabbergasted and…well quite frankly, bamboozled."

"Whoah, careful with that kind of language there. Don't strain yourself."

"I mean it just doesn't make sense."

The Middleman and Wendy Watson made their way back to the Middlemobile. He had to admit to himself that he was outright stumped on this one, and it was his experience that anytime that happened, it was rarely accompanied by anything good.

"No human has ever been able to produce a sound of the exact pitch, frequency, and decibel level to induce temporary insanity in an embedded Terractula."

Wendy strapped herself in and shook her head.

"In case you haven't noticed, very rarely do we deal with anything human."

"Not only that, but a sound like that packs enough wallop to melt the ears right of your head. There's only been one documented case of that sound existing on this planet before tonight, and that was dating all the way back to 1801."

Wendy turned quickly to her boss, arching an eyebrow, amazed.

"Two hundred years ago?"

"When Beethoven's first experiments with string quartets went horribly wrong. According to Middleman records, all four of the musicians had over-tuned their instruments during a rehearsal, and when they all played, that exact high pitch was created."

"But….Beethoven didn't die until years later."

"True, Dubbie, but how do you think he became deaf?"

Wendy opened her mouth to ask something else, and then closed it. She knew better by now than to ask questions. Working with the Middleman, she learned something new about the world everyday.

The Middleman continued.

"But Mr. Dixon appeared to suffer no hearing loss and no apparent limitations on his mind."

"He saw right through our mind trick."

The Middleman sighed through his nose.

"It's not a mind trick, Dubbie. We offer a simple persuasion…."

"That allows people to accept a more rational belief than what actually happened. This isn't my first rodeo, boss."

The Middleman raised his eyebrows and fired up the car.

"Be that as it may, we have a sure-fire mystery on our hands, Dubbie. We need to get to the bottom of it and quick."

He punched a button on the dash and opened the channel to Ida and HQ.

"Ida, I need you run a search on all persons named Daniel Dixon in the immediate area."

The Middlemobile took off


End file.
